Your booking engine is the beating heart of your vacation rental website. Simply put, it’s the foundation that supports the success of your online business. There are many different ways to add a booking engine and direct booking functionality to your website, so how do you know if the method you’re using is the best?
A software-integrated booking engine—one capable of plugging into any website—can address a multitude of the direct booking needs that vacation rental professionals express. A prime example of this type of booking engine is Bluetent’s Rezfusion Hub. Below, we’ll discuss a few common situations for which Hub is the perfect solution.
You love your current website but want to add direct booking functionality.
Your brand is how you represent yourself to the world and how you prove your value to potential guests—building it takes time and money. If you’ve already invested in a website that perfectly conveys your brand identity, you don’t have to abandon it and start over to add direct booking. Instead, choose a booking engine that can be easily added to your current website’s code.
Hub effortlessly integrates with your existing website, allowing you to match the booking experience not only to your brand but also to your site’s design. Because you know your guests and properties better than anyone, Hub’s search widget is fully customizable. Just select the search fields you want to include—highlighting popular amenities, features, and locales—and it’s a breeze for travelers to find the perfect property and click “Book Now.”
You’re having a new website designed, but booking engine development is outside of the scope of work.
In this case, your company is committed to building your brand online. You’re poised to take the leap to either launch your first website or revamp your outdated website. You’ve found a design company that fits your style and needs, but they can’t provide you with a booking engine. Other firms that can develop a booking engine are out of your price range. Deciding to add a stand-alone booking engine solves the problem—your website design isn’t tied to your booking engine provider in any way. You can maintain complete creative and feature control and still offer your guests direct booking.
When choosing a booking engine for your new website, keep in mind that many options link to a subdomain, hurting your SEO. Because Hub becomes part of your website’s code, users stay on your branded URL—optimizing your website’s visibility on search engines like Google and making your investment much more valuable.
You’re changing property management software providers and want to keep your direct booking functionality.
In the rapidly transforming vacation rental landscape, switching to a new property management software is a real possibility for many companies. If you find yourself preparing to migrate to a new PMS for any reason, you’ll want to mitigate any effects the software change will have on your website’s visitors. With the right booking engine, the transition will be seamless for your business—and potential guests won’t even know the difference. Regardless of software providers, Hub maintains uninterrupted booking.
Further enhancing the guest experience, Hub connects to an exclusive secure payment server so that your website’s checkout process will be both PCI and GDPR compliant. Travelers can trust that their confidential information is kept safe.
You’re looking to implement a microsite strategy and want direct booking on each site.
A microsite strategy is a great way to get the right properties in front of the right guests—you can target different markets by featuring your properties on multiple websites. Maybe you’d like to divide your properties into separate sites that feature luxury versus budget rentals. Maybe you’d like sites to highlight each region you represent. Maybe you manage multiple HOAs that require distinct sites. Regardless of how many microsites you develop, with a booking engine like Hub, every site can feature online booking capabilities that you can easily and quickly manage.
The list could go on.
We’ve identified even more ways that the right booking engine can make it simple, efficient, and affordable for vacation rental managers to put more “Book Now” buttons online. If this article has made you curious how Bluetent—and Hub—can help your company drive more direct bookings, give us a call at 970.510.5615.
RSS